Revamped and Updated

Wednesday, September 19, 2012Virginia Bilinski

I had been having issues with the old blog format. My pictures weren't posting properly, the fonts were off, the posts looked squished. While it looked cool and was my style, it wasn't totally functional. So ta-da! We have a new design!

I'm still working the kinks, the pictures aren't what I'm looking for, but its up and I can work on it as I go. I'm pretty happy with the design so far.

And now onto the real updates:
I HAVE A SPINNING WHEEL!!

I'm so unbelievable excited about this! My mom got it for me and shipped it here as a early Christmas present. She's a 1997 Wee Peggy. The Wee Peggy's were originally made by Rappard, an Australian company, that was then taken over by Ashford. I believe this is an Ashford Wee Peggy but it's really hard to tell.

The only catch with this gift: I have to spin some fiber and knit her a scarf out of it. I have no problem with that at all! And since I really want to do a good job with it I've been doing a lot of practicing. Learning how to spin was an ugly business. First it was putting in too much twist and not winding onto the bobbin fast enough so I tried switching the drive bands. Then one of the drive bands broke but after I fixed it, set it up to scotch tension and gave it a try, it went a lot smoother.

Here's my first handspun:

It's was some Knit Picks bare superwash merino that I hand dyed with Kool-aid. I then spun it up and navajo plied it. It's pretty thick and thin and I'm not quite sure what the yardage is yet as I'm waiting on my niddy noddy but I think I'm in love. I've called it "A song of Ice and Fire" after the book series. I'm quite happy with it and want to use it for something but I'm not sure what for yet.

I've also finished my Never-ending knee highs for my friend, Sierra. I started them in February and have knit on them a bit here and a bit there ever since. I finally decided to sit down and finish them when I realized that Christmas is coming and that meant that my queue was going to fill up soon.

It's not the best picture but it's all I have. It's turns out that it's actually quite hard to photograph knee highs when you're also the model. These were the biggest pain in the arse! I had to re-do the red striped about three times on the first sock. Then for the second sock, I realized that it was longer than the first by about 2-3 inches and I liked it better (since it was closer to the knee). So I had to un do the bind off (again) on the first sock, rip out the ribbing, and add an extra two inches or so and then do the ribbing again. I'm pretty happy with them now, but more happy that I've finished them! They've been blocked and just need to be packaged and shipped off to their lovely recipient.

I still have my Clarus shawl on the needles, but haven't had time to work on it since Christmas is only three months away. Instead I cast on... a gift for my dad and have it about 65% finished already. I have a shawl, socks, frog amigurumi and scarf to finish before Christmas. And I swore to myself that I would not cast on Vivian (or even swatch) until I had finished all of my Christmas knitting. So far, it's working as great motivation because I really really want this sweater.